


Defection

by JacarandaBanyan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, JARVIS is so done with Tony’s shit, Sci-Fi AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JacarandaBanyan/pseuds/JacarandaBanyan
Summary: Nebula has been sent by Thanos to kill genius inventor and only permanent resident of Novathela’s outer moon Tony Stark before he can oppose the Mad Titan.
Relationships: Nebula & Tony Stark
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43
Collections: Tony Stark Flash Bingo





	Defection

**Author's Note:**

> For Tony Stark Flash Bingo
> 
> Square 021- Science Fiction AU

Tony Stark was not a hard man to find.

His enormous tower dominated the desolate, empty rock plateau of Novathela’s outermost moon. When it was lit up completely, it’s bright blue glow could be seen from the planet’s surface like a single shimmering sequins against the paler white-grey of the moon itself. Ear splitting music pulsed from the uppermost reaches of the tower, as though it’s owner wanted to compete with the howl of the wind that swept like a pack of charging wolves across the moonscape.

Nebula approached the tower on foot, power blade clutched in her perfectly articulated prosthetic hand. For now, the blade was retracted and powered down.

There was nowhere to hide on this moon. No mesas or banks to hide her approach behind or asteroid holes to skulk in- just the flat, rolling plains of smooth, sandy rock.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Tony Stark’s inventions wouldn’t be fooled by anything so simple.

She squeezed her fist around the handle of her power blades, and the new joint in her shoulder to replace the one Thanos had ripped out twinged.

The base of the tower was surrounded by intoxicated revelers, their bodies adorned with glowing rings and teeth and even whole limbs that shone as though filled with the famous glowing sand of Cesteron 2-B. She didn’t have to look to know that each and every glowing technological marvel was engraved with the name of the man her adopted father had ordered her to slay.

No one stopped her as she strode towards the base of the tower, although by now surely one of Stark’s pet AIs should have tagged her as a potential threat and sent someone to intercept her. 

She glanced around, looking for one of her sisters in the crowd. This assignment was to be a race, with a pat on the back from their adopted father as a prize for the winner and grueling remedial training and ‘body conditioning’ for the loser. Who her opponent was, she did not know. Hopefully it wouldn’t be Gamora.

The walls of Stark’s tower were smooth and gently rounded, as though shaped by the moon’s howling winds instead of designed by human hands.

A human’s hands would have slid right off of them if anyone were foolish enough to try to climb them freehand.

It was a good thing Nebula’s hands were no longer human.

She curled her fingers until they resembled the claws of some fierce predatory bird and manually locked the joints in place. Her finger pads dilated, allowing suction cups to bloom out from the tiny compartment they’d been folded into. Tiny pores began to excrete a sticky liquid. She rubbed her fingertips together to speed it around.

Then she stuck the handle of her power blade into her mouth and began to climb. 

Her artificial limbs let her scamper up the side of the tower like a gecko across a kitchen wall. Years ago, back when she’d been more flesh than prosthetic and still harbored hope of defeating Gamora in one of their Thanos’s training battles, this sort of climb would have turned her muscles to magma that burned even as they deformed under the strain and the changing pressure as she ascended through stage gravitational bubble that protected the partygoers below from the toxic atmosphere and decreased gravity of Novathela’s moon. Now it was only a scattershot of bright pinpoints of pain as what few remaining muscles and ligaments she still had were ground between the tireless metal that had replaced everything else.

About a tenth of the way up, her left ring finger cracked under the top-heavy weight of her body.

She cursed. That finger had been replaced early on, when she weighed about as much as any other humanoid of her height and stature. It was never meant to support the weight of all the metal that had replaced her flesh.

She’d known it was going to fail eventually. She’d just hoped it would last longer than it had.

A hundred meters later, a joint in her right foot seized.

She glanced down at the throng of people below. They were far enough away that she couldn’t make out individual faces anymore, even with her enhanced eyes. Surprisingly, she could make out the forms of a couple robots mingling with the rest of the crowd. So it was true that Stark let his robots roam freely on his turf. Rumor claimed he treated them like real people. Based on what she was seeing, there was some truth to those rumors.

Nowhere did she see any of her sisters.

Resolve bolstered, she turned her attention back to the tower wall. If she fell from this height, even the heavy duty metal scaffolding that kept her Frankenstein body from crumpling in on itself would fail.

There was nothing she could do but keep going.

“Excuse me, Miss Assassin,” a polite voice said from somewhere just inches to her left. “I believe you would have an easier time if you took the stairs. I assume you have your reasons for bypassing the elevator, but I assure you, you’ll get just as good a workout on the stairs as you will climbing like that.”

Nebula searched for a speaker in the smooth wall, but found nothing.

“Who are you?” She snarled around the handle still clenched between her teeth. “Has the great Tony Stark finally deigned to stop me?”

“I am JARVIS,” the voice replied, “and no, Sir continues to insist I refrain from doing my job. Heaven forbid his humble AI fail to extend every courtesy to the latest assassin come to claim his head.”

Ink black lines appeared like hair-thin brush strokes on the white tower walls, and a window opened up six inches to get right where before there had been nothing but smooth, uninterrupted wall. Sections of wall sank inward, forming convenient footholds she could use to reach the window edge without straining the seized joint in her foot.

“If you would make your way to the window, Miss, I will be available to direct you to the Penthouse. I can also call an elevator, if you wish. That will be much faster than the stairs, and will keep us from making Sir wait too long.”

Nebula scowled, but obediently climbed through the window and into the tower. As soon as she stepped through, it melted away into the wall behind her, stranding her on an empty platform with stairs corkscrewing skyward towards the top of the tower. Elevators flew up and down between other platforms like hers scattered at different heights between the ground and the penthouse.

A quiet ding announced that JARVIS had stopped one for her. The metal box slowed to a stop when it was level with the platform. The doors slid open and an invisible speaker played a cute little melody as it waited for her to step inside. 

Nebula unsheathed her power blade with a sharp flick of her wrist, sending the electrified blade singing as it slid over the inside of the sheath. Then she stepped into the elevator. The jaunty tune ended, and the doors slid shut behind her.

“I won’t hesitate to slice this box to ribbons and climb up the sides of the elevator shaft if you’ve lied to me.”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Assassin. Unfortunately, Sir wishes to meet you.”

A few seconds later, the elevator doors slid open again to reveal an enormous room filled with holoscreens and expensive furniture.

“Hey, you made it!” Cried a handsome middle aged man with a glowing circle in his chest. “I thought I was going to have to wait forever for you to finish free climbing the whole tower. Did JARVIS let you in?”

“As you instructed, Sir.”

“Great, great. Here, sit down and I’ll take a look at your foot. Am I right in saying that joint near the back was the one that failed?”

Nebula raised her power blade and pointed it at the welcoming man in front of her. Bright lines crackled electric blue wrong the sharp edge. This was the man she’d come here for. The man who had spooked her father so severely, he’d sent two of his children to ensure he died before the night was out. 

“Is it true,” she demanded, “that your AIs are fully conscious, sentient beings without any organic parts?”

“Please, I wouldn’t let JARVIS languish as a glorified search engine.”

Behind him, a small crack appeared in the floor-to-ceiling glass outer wall that allowed an observer to look down at the crowds at the base of the tower. The crack widened, arching, until a section the size of a single-person space pod soundlessly fell away.

The network-capable implants in her artificial skin went crazy as the activity in the Tower’s closed network spiked. JARVIS must have seen the breach.

“And is it true that you will work with humanoids, aliens, cyborgs, and robots alike?” She asked.

“Of course I do,” Tony Stark said. He seemed rather bemused that she could possibly think otherwise.

Behind him, Proxima Midnight stepped out of a pod so dark it turned invisible against the night sky and entered the penthouse.

“And is it true,” she asked, voice a whisper now, “That you will stand against Thanos when he comes to this system?”

This question Stark seemed to take seriously.

“I will,” he promised solemnly. “Whatever it takes.”

A split second later Nebula’s power blade sung through the air and implanted itself in her sister’s forehead with a dull, meaty sound. Proxima Midnight lived long enough to snarl her fury and take a single step in Tony Stark’s direction before her corpse toppled backwards out the window back into her space pod.

Nebula fell to one knee in a gesture of respectful deference that she’d heard came from Tony Stark’s home planet.

“Then I am at your service.”

Her new master, who did not seem to really understand quite how momentous it was for a child of Thanos to turn traitor and pledge their services to another, just blinked.

“Okay. Can I fix your foot now, or is there a third one of you lurking around here somewhere?”

She shook her head jerkily and unfastened her prosthetic limb. He smiled as he took it from her hand.

“Then let’s get started.”


End file.
